alter vs atear, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“alter” is a pronoun and “atear” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#23,189
“alter” frequency rank: #38,140
“atear” frequency rank: 61329
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	alter	atear
Definition	outro (dentre dois)	lançar fogo a

Letter map: alter vs atear

Shared letters muted; letters that set alter and atear apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch

alter

5 ch

atear

Role in the sentence - alter and atear

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alter is apronoun and atearaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61329, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alter is recorded at frequency rank #23,189, classified as apron. atear is at rank #38,140, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɐ.ˈtjaɾ/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 61329, this pair ranks #7,186 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of alter vs atear

Shared letters: aert. Private to "alter": l. Private to "atear": -.

"alter" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC · "atear" · 5 letters · shape VCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

alter ← aletr · allter · alterr · altre · altter · atler
atear ← aetar · ataer · atearr · atera · attear · taear

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "alter" and "atear" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alter" is a pronoun and "atear" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "alter" or "atear" show up more?

"alter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,189 in our Portuguese list, against #38,140 for "atear". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "alter" and "atear". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "alter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "atear" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #7,186 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"alter" and "atear" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "atar vs atear". Nearby pair
Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #7,186 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.